Tomorrow is the Problem

ICA Miami’s new podcast explores urgent issues of our time through the voices of leading thinkers, artists, and activists.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami proudly announces the inaugural season of Tomorrow is the Problem, a new podcast series that approaches the urgent issues of our time by unearthing the hidden meaning behind everyday phenomena. The first four information-packed episodes in season one look at oceans as a source of knowledge and consider their symbolic and historical meaning across many cultures and communities, and through the lenses of climate activism, marine archeology, Afrofuturism, and more.

Tomorrow is the Problem builds on ICA Miami’s robust program of digital initiatives, designed to engage audiences around the world with the cutting-edge ideas explored in ICA Miami’s in-person exhibitions and programs. The platform is spearheaded by the museum’s Knight Foundation Art + Research Center (A+RC), South Florida’s only museum-based research department. The initiative is made possible by a 2 million USD grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation grant in 2018, which kickstarted the museum’s five-year expansion of A+RC’s scope, including the creation of new digital platforms to advance the exchange of ideas between the public, artists, cultural theorists, and other thinkers in the Miami region and globally. 

For the podcast’s first season, host Donna Honarpisheh, Assistant Curator, Knight Foundation Art + Research Center at ICA Miami, invites a diverse cast of thinkers and activists to join her in each episode as they delve into urgent issues from unexpected angles. Guests include Afrofuturists Abdul Qadim Haqq and DeForrest Brown, Jr.; marine archeologist Ayana Flewellen; novelist Edwidge Danticat; and journalist Dina Gilio-Whitaker, among others, who consider the sea as history, the sea as the future, transoceanic relations and migration, and rising tides. 

Episode One: The Sea is History. Examine the sea as a collective memory of violence, an underwater keeper of often obscured identity and meaning. From sunken slave ships to coral preservation as an act of trauma healing, this episode is a 30-minute deep dive into the historical and symbolic meaning of our physical oceans.

Episode Two: The Sea is Future. The sea isn’t the exclusive domain of history, it also nourishes the ebbs and flows of the futures we could build. The wordless work of the Detroit electro-techno band Drexciya provided a new means to explore racialized narratives and appropriate cultural works, join our guests as they explore the three decades of communal world-building.

Episode Three: Transoceanic Relations. Whether firmly grounded in the geographical idea of “place” or that of placelessness, the diasporic experience across oceans manages to keep historical notions of connectivity.

Episode Four: Rising Tides. From Miami’s Tequesta to Hawaii’s Kanaka Maoli, Indigenous peoples everywhere are living memory of what the water has already taught us.

Tomorrow is the Problem was made in partnership with the creative team at Podfly. All four episodes of season one are now available to stream on ICA Miami’s website and anywhere else you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple, and more.